Geoeye-1 Highest Resolution Commercial Imager Launched to Date

GeoEye-1 Highest Resolution Commercial Imager Launched to Date

FACT SHEET

Mission Description FACTS AT A GLANCE GeoEye-1 is a multispectral, Earth-imaging satellite with some of the highest resolution and most advanced collection capabilities of any commercial imaging satellite launched to date. The satellite orbits the Earth’s poles to • High-performance successor to capture detailed digital images, and can revisit any point on Earth once every Orbital ATK's Orbview-3 satellite three days or sooner. GeoEye-1 offers unprecedented spatial resolution by • Hi-resolution color and black and white simultaneously acquiring panchromatic (black and white) and multispectral imaging with a 1,000 Gb onboard solid state (color) imagery at 0.41 meter (1.3 feet) and 1.65 meter (5.4 feet) resolutions data recorder and a 740 Mbps downlink respectively. This orbiting Earth observatory can collect up to 700,000 • 681 km, 98° (near polar) Low Earth Orbit square kilometers of panchromatic and up to 350,000 square kilometers of mission multispectral imagery per day. One thousand gigabits of image data storage is • Simple, easily integrated design based available onboard for "store and forward" operation with a 150/740 megabits per second selectable-rate X-band downlink for stored or real-time imagery on Orbital ATK's flight-proven LEOStar-3 data. Ground objects can be geo-located from the satellite to better than five modular spacecraft architecture that meters without ground control points. reduces assembly and test cycle times • Resolution to 0.41 m (16 in.) and mapping of natural and manmade features to within 5 m Spacecraft (16 ft.) of their actual location on the surface Orbital ATK was the prime contractor for the design, assembly, payload of the Earth without ground control points integration, and test of the satellite. Orbital ATK also administered and managed • Precision attitude control system and highly the subcontract with Exelis for the Electro-Optical Camera Assembly. The agile camera allows daily collection of up to spacecraft design is based on Orbital ATK's flight-proven LEOStar™-3 standard 700,000 sq. km of black and white imagery modular bus, with additional design heritage from our Coriolis, Swift, and and up to 350,000 sq. km of color imagery Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope spacecraft programs. The fully redundant GeoEye-1 spacecraft has a design life of seven years and a sophisticated attitude Customer: control system to provide a highly stable, while also highly agile imaging platform. GeoEye, Inc. (now DigitalGlobe, Inc.) We continue to provide on-orbit support to GeoEye-1. Availability over the mission date is at 98 percent. GeoEye-1

Specifications Mission Partners

Spacecraft Orbital ATK Mass: 1,920 kg (4,232 lb.) Prime contractor responsible for spacecraft design and manufacture, administration of camera and optics subcontract, Solar Arrays: Deployable, 7-panel, GaAs cells, 3862 W payload integration and system test, development of a Mission EOL Operations Center, launch support, and mission operations Orbit: 681 km circular @ 98°, sun synchronous support Stabilization: 3-axis, Zero Momentum Bias, nadir pointing Pointing: 75 arcsec control, 0.4 arcsec knowledge Exelis Data Storage: 1,000 Gbits Design, build, and test of the payload camera and optics (the Electro-Optical Camera Assembly) Data Downlink: X-band, 740 Mbps or 150 Mbps selectable Propulsion: 144.5 kg (318.6 lb.) of blowdown monopropellant hydrazine with eight 22N Agility Means More Imagery per Pass thrusters GeoEye-1 makes 15 orbits per day in its sun-synchronous orbit Mission Life: 7 year design; 15 year fuel supply passing over a given area at about 10:30 a.m. local time every day. GeoEye-1 can “revisit” any point on the globe every three days Launch or sooner, depending upon the required look angle. The entire Launch Vehicle: Delta II 7420-10 satellite is able to turn and swivel very quickly in orbit to point Launch Site: Vandenberg Air Force Base, California the camera at areas of the Earth directly below it, as well as from side-to-side and front-to-back. This agility enables GeoEye-1 to Date: September 6, 2008 collect much more imagery during a single pass.

Instrument Electro-Optical Camera Assembly The Optical Telescope Assembly, detectors, focal plane assembly and highspeed digital processing electronics are capable of processing 700 million pixels per second. The agile camera allows for side-to-side extensions of the camera's 15.2 kilometer (9.44 mile)-wide swath or multiple images of the same target during a single pass to create a stereo picture.

GeoEye-1 satellite image of Paris, France (DigitalGlobe photo)

GeoEye-1 at its Vandenberg Air Force Base launch site GeoEye-1 satellite image of Kutztown University (DigitalGlobe photo)

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